A modellistic view of the kinetics of metabolic processes: differences in the glucose and xylose degradation pathway

In vivo NMR spectroscopy and sugars selectively enriched with 13C were used to follow the step-by-step metabolic kinetics of glucose and xylose by an isolated strain (G11) of Klebsiella planticola. The experimental results were then used to develop a model based on non-linear differential equations totally consistent with the experimental data. During the fitting procedure, a set of kinetic constants, each related to a specific metabolic path, were calculated.